DISTRIBUTED.--WAY IN
WHICH THIS DISTRIBUTION IS COUNTERACTED.--THE APTITUDE OF CHILDREN
FOR DIFFERENT PURSUITS SHOULD BE EARLY SOUGHT OUT.--HINTS FOR A BETTER
SYSTEM OF EDUCATION.--AMBITION AN UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE.

The reflections thus put down, may assist us in answering the question
as to the way in which talents are distributed among men by the hand of
nature.

All things upon the earth and under the earth, and especially all
organised bodies of the animal or vegetable kingdom, fall into classes.
It is by this means, that the child no sooner learns the terms, man,
horse, tree, flower, than, if an object of any of these kinds which
he has never seen before, is exhibited to him, he pronounces without
hesitation, This is a man, a horse, a tree, a flower.

All organised bodies of the animal or vegetable kingdom are cast in a
mould of given dimension and feature belonging to a certain number of
individuals, though distinguished by inexhaustible varieties. It is by
means of those features that the class of each individual is determined.

To confine ourselves to man.

All men, the monster and the lusus naturae excepted, have a certain
form, a certain complement of limbs, a certain internal structure, and
organs of sense--may we not add further, certain powers of intellect?

Hence it seems to follow, that man is more like and more equal to
man, deformities of body and abortions of intellect excepted, than the
disdainful and fastidious censors of our common nature are willing to
admit.

I am inclined to believe, that, putting idiots and extraordinary cases
out of the question, every human creature is endowed with talents,
which, if rightly directed, would shew him to be apt, adroit,
intelligent and acute, in the walk for which his organisation especially
fitted him.

But the practices and modes of civilised life prompt us to take the
inexhaustible varieties of man, as he is given into our guardianship by
the bountiful hand of nature, and train him in one uniform exercise, as
the raw recruit is treated when he is brought under the direction of his
drill-serjeant.

The son of the nobleman, of the country-gentleman, and of those parents
who from vanity or whatever other motive are desirous that their
offspring should be devoted to some liberal profession, is in nearly all
instances sent to the grammar-school. It is in this scene principally,
that the judgment is formed that not above one boy in a hundred
possesses an